On a Tuesday evening, my husband and I went out to Capital Fringe to see my stepson's girlfriend perform in Over Her Dead Body, an 80-minute theater piece composed of bluegrass murder ballads, with full bluegrass band and five top-notch singers (including my stepson's girlfriend, who has a beautiful, deep, North Carolina voice-- and somewhat macabre sensibility-- perfectly suited for the material).  I would have loved this even if a family member were not performing.  I would have seen it again.  (But it is sold out.)  I hope they are able to take this show further than Capital Fringe, because it is wonderful.  Review here.  (Update: Over Her Dead Body won Best Overall show according to the audience awards, and is moving on to the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center!  See video here.)

After the show (which, due to tight Fringe scheduling, was at 6:30 pm), husband and I were trudging back up Florida Ave., to the nearest Metro station which is over a mile away, and wishing we would encounter something for dinner.  It was still light, the most amazing huge orange sun setting over the city street.  Only a single restaurant offered itself, but its board outside proclaimed $2.75 tacos, so I convinced my husband it was a good idea.  It was.  The Far East Taco Grille.  Far East?  Tacos?  Maybe just because it was on the east side of the city?

Nope.  In some ways these are conventional tacos: you choose flour or corn tortilla, several types of salsa are available.  But the fillings are things like Korean short rib, spicy pork, tofu.  Topping styles include a kimchi version.  Clearly this is a Korean-fusion joint, just like where I work, only so different.  Better.   Though the menu is more limited and it is just counter service.  I order two tacos: flour tortilla, short rib, "#15 sauce," banh mi-style toppings.  Short ribs cost $0.25 more each for tacos, so this meal cost $6 altogether, and it is perfect.  So, so good.  The short ribs are tender and delicious (better than those at our restaurant, maybe even better than the ones Scarlet made for me), the #15 sauce (whatever the hell that means) is a sweet and spicy Asian-influenced sauce, I suspect involving gochujang, and the banh mi toppings are pickly, spicy, sweet.  Total flavor bomb.  I think it would be overwhelming to eat more than two.  My husband ordered more conservatively, as he always does: spicy pork in a rice bowl with their simplest topping option of lettuce, cheese, and lime crema.  He said it was very good too.  In total we paid $20 (including a tip, which would be optional here) for one of the best meals I've had in a while.  I have no idea how they can make any money at all, charging $3 for tacos containing a substantial amount of expensive short rib, but GO THERE while it lasts.

Next day.  I've finally had time to organize my recipes and do a more extensive shopping trip at the Whole Foods, so (after a long, busy day at work) I have three dishes planned to cook this evening.  One is my second effort from Mridula Baljekar's Best-Ever Curry Cookbook, the Tandoori Chicken.  This time I buy the appropriate amount of chicken, and actually look up the spices involved in tandoori masala.  So I believe myself to have followed the directions fairly well.  I did blend my own tandoori masala out of spices I already possessed, instead of buying a prefab paste, so it's possible I missed out on some ingredients that might have been present in the paste... sugar, perhaps?  Because my chicken tasted nothing like what you get in an Indian restaurant.  (Perhaps it is just more authentically North Indian, as it appears in that section of the book.)

​Anyway, I managed to skin my whole chicken myself (with painful slowness, using kitchen scissors), a feat that used to be quite ordinary for home cooks, but of which I now feel inordinately proud.  It marinated for two hours in yogurt mixed with the tandoori spices, then roasted at a high temperature (475 degrees) for about 30 minutes.  Simple enough, except the chicken was not done after 30 minutes.  It looked  quite done on the outside, but close to the bone it was still soft and pink.  Returned to the oven and eaten after 15 more minutes, the cook on the chicken was still only barely adequate.  Another 10 minutes would have been better.

While the chicken was marinating, I made the Buttery Cayenne Pecans from the October 2015 issue of Bon Appetit.  These were a simple matter of melting butter, stirring in Worcestershire sauce and spices, tossing with the pecans, and roasting.  Kind of like the chicken, actually.  But more successful.  The one problem did not lie with the recipe: the pecans themselves were not very good.  I bought them in a package from Whole Foods, and they had the bitter aftertaste and discomfiting mouthfeel of unripe fruit.  The flavor was worse when raw, but they retained some of their bitterness even after roasting. 

​The third recipe was intended as the final Pie-of-the-Month for my husband, and was from this month's Bon Appetit via The Bitten Word.  The Bitten Word guys had made this Blueberry and Corn Crisp, and concluded that it had potential, even though it seemed not to have enough corn in it, and the topping did not brown well.  They discussed the desirability of trying it again with double the corn, and a blast of higher-temperature baking in hopes of achieving a true "crisp."  So I made the recipe myself, incorporating these tweaks.  Nope.  Before baking, I had a full 1-inch (or deeper!) layer of corn-y crumbs on top of the blueberries.  During baking, almost this entire layer sank into the bubbling berries, leaving only a little topping peeking out.  Even that didn't brown much.  So, to the extent that there was any perceptible crumb topping at all, it was mushy and dissolved in your mouth (and not in a good way).  Definitely not "crisp."  The corn kernels (whose quantity I had doubled) simply dropped out of the topping and mixed with the blueberries, creating a somewhat odd fruit filling instead of a cornbread-y crumb.  Your experience will probably not differ, as other Bitten Word commenters seemed unhappy too.  It was not inedible, but I can confidently fail to recommend this recipe.

​All in all, it was a disappointing dinner.  The pecans were all right.

June 8
The usual kind of before-work morning.  Breakfast is lemon water, coffee with half and half, and a smoothie made from grape juice, goat kefir, hemp protein powder, almond butter, dates, strawberries, blueberries, and CSA lettuce.  I really need to use up some CSA lettuce.

At work, I have a cup of decaf coffee in the morning when it is slow, and a cup of regular at noontime.  After that, it gets busy, and I forget the fact that I am hungry.

Back at home, 3:00, it is time for lunch: leftover pasta from last night, a slice of multigrain toast with melted swiss cheese.  Decaf coffee with half and half.

I have arranged to meet my husband in Silver Spring for a movie this evening.  I leave some Whole Foods sushi for my kid to eat for dinner, and plan to meet my husband at the Panera by the movie theater at 6:30.  However, the metro is experiencing big delays because of repairs, and my husband is late; I end up eating at Panera by myself.  I have a whole-grain bagel with cream cheese and tomato, and a decaf coffee which I end up hardly drinking.  I get another bagel for my husband and hide it in my purse for him to eat during the movie.  Once we get to the theater, I also buy us a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups to share.  The movie is rich in melodrama, and by the time we leave we are exhausted.
 
June 9
No work today.  Instead I badly need to make some preparation for a backpacking trip my kid and I are planning in three weeks.  Breakfast is the usual: lemon water, black coffee, smoothie made from grape juice, goat kefir, lactose-free milk, hemp protein powder, almond butter, farm strawberries, frozen peaches, and farm lettuce.

Afterwards, decaf coffee with half and half, and three hours on my computer in the easy chair.

Lunch is half a dozen little CSA farm strawberries, half of an enormous grapefruit, some CSA shelling peas, and six almond-butter-and-blackberry-jam saltine cracker sandwiches. 

​After an afternoon of shopping at REI and some other places, including Giant, I come home and have some decaf coffee and talk to my kid.  Also, I eat the last four mini-Reese's peanut butter cups over the course of the afternoon and early evening.
​
Shopping (Giant): 2 packages English muffins, free-range eggs, lactose-free 2% milk, 8 AA batteries, natural dish soap, Cascadian Farm oats & honey granola, coconut water, tart cherry juice, bananas, 3 small yellow mangos, salted cashews, 2 pints blueberries.  $48.

About 5:30, in the midst of my cup of decaf, I start dinner and dessert more or less simultaneously.  I am making the Mushroom and Burrata Lasagnette from October's Bon Appetit (the recipe also provides for a kale salad on the side), and Molly Yeh's recently posted Whipped Yogurt Cheesecake with Roasted Rhubarb, which my husband has selected (loosely) as his "pie-of-the-month.".  Bon Appetit has listed their lasagnette in a group of dinners-for-two ("You and Me"), and then gently given away that it does not fit there ("Listen, this dish is indulgent, and makes a bit more than two responsible adults should finish in one serving.  But for crying out loud, live a little.")  It seems to me that you would have to live a lot.  I planned this meal for the three of us, and it still looks like too much lasagna to me.  Maybe four servings with just kale on the side, or six with additional side dish(es)?  Whatever.  They had to make it fit their gimmick. 

​Making dinner is a little bit of a whirlwind, what with trying to prep the lasagna and prep the cheesecakes at the same time.  Poor planning.  I do manage to fit in a glass of red wine, and my husband calls to say he fell asleep in his office chair and will be late, so everything works out okay.

​Okay, 1/4 of the lasagna apiece, which is what I plated up, is still too much.  I finish my serving but am overly full.  Half the lasagna, which is the serving generously suggested by Bon Appetit, would have covered an entire dinner plate.  Maybe hung off the edges a little.  Are they nuts?  The flavor is pretty good, not amazing.  It is a fairly dry lasagna.  I would like more sauce, some form of moisture.  Also more salt, but that is my own fault.  I should have put more salt in the ricotta.  The raw kale salad is chewy. 

As for dessert, which we eat not long afterwards, it is okay, but I am not wildly thrilled with it.  Once again, Yeh's dessert is very low on sweetness (even though she refers to the 1/2 c. of sugar added to the roasted rhubarb as an "ass-ton").  The only part that is distinctly sweet is the crumb crust, and that, due to the addition of what seems to me like too much coconut oil, has become a kind of hard brick at the bottom of the glass instead of a crumbly layer.  I have to stab at it, hard, with my spoon in order to break it up.  Visually, though, the layered glasses are very pretty.  I will have to try a few more of her recipes, but I am wondering if the gorgeousness of her blog means that her interests lie more in design than in flavor.  Design-wise, her website is my very favorite!

In the wee hours of the morning, my throat is really scratchy.  It's too close to alarm-clock time to take an antihistamine, so I go into the kitchen for half a glass of full-fat milk, which usually helps.  Pour it in the dark, take a couple of big swallows before brain catches up with mouth to figure out what is wrong.  The milk is really thick, tastes bitter.  It's gone sour... really sour.  I don't drink milk much-- this carton is more or less allocated to my kid-- but how have they not noticed before now??  Uck.  I rinse out my glass, pour the carton of whole milk down the sink, take a little of the lowfat lactose-free stuff to wash the flavor away.  It helps enough that I can get back to sleep for a couple more hours.

​June 3
My husband had to be up and out of the house at 6 am this morning, so I made our smoothies the night before and set them in the fridge.  He drank his before leaving, but I ended up giving mine to my kid, who was looking around for breakfast at 6:15.  So, no smoothie for me this morning.  Breakfast: lemon water, coffee with half and half, decaf coffee with half and half, leftover spinach-and-chickpeas, one extra-large hamantasch.

Around 10 I am feeling very restless and make another cup of decaf with half and half.  I settle (kind of) and write.  More regular coffee at noon.  While making this cup, I notice some irregularities in the placement of coffee supplies that lead me to wonder whether I have in fact had any caffeinated coffee yet this morning.  Maybe my husband made decaf by mistake.  But then why would I be feeling so manic?  I drink the coffee while looking up backpacking tips and supplies on the internet, and freaking out about how I have arranged to take kid on a 3-day, 30-mile backpacking trip in four weeks, without having any equipment or having a fucking clue what I am doing.  At least it is a flat trail and close to civilization.  But: how irresponsible.  I'd better get on this.

Lunch (still thinking about the backpacking trip): Whole Foods tequila-lime tortilla chips, slice of 7-grain toast with butter, dish of sliced almonds mixed with Craisins.  Lame.

3:00: another cup of decaf coffee, black this time.  Thinking about anniversary gifts for my husband.  5th anniversary gifts are supposed to be wood, or silverware.  I enjoy finding something that fits into the framework, even when it is not precisely what is intended.  Last year "fruit" turned into pie-of-the-month (from which I still owe him two months' worth of pies).

6 pm, I get hungry, have a handful of peanuts.  Then the last bits of the bag of tortilla chips.  About 6:45, it is time to "make dinner"-- in quotation marks this time, because I am serving a) Wolfgang Puck's canned chicken and wild rice soup, b) slices of Rudi's multigrain bread with butter, and c) some actual cooked vegetables, consisting of garlic, spring bulb onions from the CSA farm, CSA sugar snap peas, and part of a leftover tomato.  Part c) counts as cooking,  but the rest does not!  Note to self: the soup, which used to be a favorite of my kid's before they stopped eating chicken, is kind of gross.  I have no idea why kid liked it so much.  My husband didn't even finish his, which is downright weird.  He also didn't comment on it, but simply poured the remainder down the sink.  I would have done the same, if I weren't so damned conscientious.  
 
June 4
So bummed out that I have to work an unplanned shift at the restaurant today.  Early morning breakfast (6:30 am): lemon water, coffee with half and half, smoothie made from pomegranate cranberry juice, canned pumpkin, hemp protein powder, peanut butter, banana, a tasteless squishy plum, a squishy but still underripe-tasting kiwi, canned papaya, and CSA farm lettuce.  Not one of my best efforts, as the extremely tart juice in conjunction with the green kiwi and papaya-- the latter of which I always find slightly rotten-tasting-- had a flavor somewhat reminiscent of vomit.  At least to me.  I had the self-restraint not to mention this to my husband, who commented (confusingly) that the smoothie was "very sweet!"

Work was a gigantic clusterfuck, which is neither here nor there as food goes, and during this epic disaster I did manage to ingest a cup of decaf and a cup of regular coffee, with half and half, along with a rather larger amount of water than usual, due to the air conditioning being broken in the restaurant.  I didn't get home to eat lunch until 4:00.

(I never know how much to say about the restaurant.  On the one hand, people seem to enjoy crazy restaurant stories.  On the other hand, I still have to work there, and have a certain degree of personal loyalty that does not lend itself to exposing all the business's warts in a public forum.  I may have to save the wart-exposing for fiction, or "fiction.")

Okay, so it's 4:00 now, and lunch.  I have one leftover hamantasch (I think I kind of underbaked them, and between that and the humidity they have become seriously soft); a slice of multigrain toast with butter; some peanuts; and a small slice of  blah cantaloupe.  Delish!  But, it is food.  Also, a cup of decaf coffee with half and half.  I am so exhausted.

Two hours later, when a little less exhausted, I shower and change and go down the street to the store.  Shopping (Co-op): decaf coffee, 3 individual Brown Cow yogurts, quart of plain Brown Cow yogurt, quart of plain goat kefir, half and half, lactose-free 2% milk, Equal Exchange coffee, peach lemonade, grape juice, organic raisins, 3 rolls toilet paper, strawberries, blueberries, 2 containers raspberries (on sale for $1 each!), 1 huge grapefruit.  $68.

​Eventually, my husband gets home from work and, when I get out the frozen enchiladas I was thinking of making for dinner, I discover that they have to bake for 50-55 minutes.  Seriously?  So we decide to walk down the street and have dinner at the middle eastern restaurant.  This restaurant is uneven.  Sometimes we  have had food there that is very underwhelming; in fact, for a long time we had a tendency to forget the place even existed.  But, on occasion, we've had items-- or entire meals-- that were great.  This particular experience was on the underwhelming side.  I ordered a glass of cabernet, which I desperately needed.  That was fine.  We had perfectly okay little dinner salads with lettuce, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, and olives.  We shared some good hummus, with pita bread that seemed thinner and more tasteless than usual.  It reminded me of matzoh.  Then, as an entree, I chose (irresponsibly, perhaps) a vegetarian okra dish with tomato sauce and basmati rice.  Unlike the rest of my family, I really like okra if it is prepared well.  I thought this was my opportunity to enjoy okra without burdening my friends and relations.  However, the okra was cooked to a mushy, sticky consistency and tasted mostly of tomato-- not inedible, but nothing special.  My husband, who ordered a lamb kebob, to my surprise opined that it reminded him of the steak at this restaurant.  I thought surely the lamb kebob would be a safe choice.  So. 

The glass of wine was bigger than I pour at home, and I am a slow drinker, so I was trying (I failed) to finish it before I left the restaurant, and ended up feeling rather stumbly on the walk home.  What a lightweight.  I took half the okra home in a box, even though I didn't really like it.  Did I mention being over-conscientious?
​
For reasons that are not clear even to me, I have a Brown Cow maple yogurt just before bed.

​Mar 26
I wake up feeling sick again.  What is this?

Breakfast: sliced yellow squash, slice of flaxseed toast with butter and jam, 2 fried eggs.

Shopping (Safeway): Wheat Chex, Rice Chex, almonds, penne pasta, cooking oil, peanuts, rice cakes, 2 cans Progresso soup, ground cardamom, 2 bags coffee, organic peanut butter, fig preserves, brown cage-free eggs, 18 regular white eggs, cream cheese, whole milk, unsalted butter, Lactaid 2% milk, 3 Amy's frozen burritos, 6 individual Open Nature Greek yogurts, 3 Evol frozen burritos, large Chobani vanilla Greek yogurt, Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, asparagus, red seedless grapes, sugar snap peas, Italian parsley, 2 avocados, green beans, 5 lbs. of clementines, romaine hearts, dried dates, 2 bags of Snapeas (1 plain, 1 Caesar), store-made guacamole, strawberries, dried mulberries, shredded romano cheese, pesto, store-made tortilla chips, Londoner cheese.  $171.

The slightly atypical purchasing patterns above reflect my desire to provide for my husband while kid and I are away in Massachusetts.  My husband does not cook for himself, and if left to his own devices will simply eat peanut butter (sometimes with bread, but not always) for the entirety of my absence.  I am trying to stock a variety of reasonably healthy foods that will require little more effort on his part than slathering peanut butter onto bread.

Shopping tires me out so much that I spend the next four hours hanging out in my bed with coffees and, eventually, lunch.  I am intending to make hamantaschen (specifically, these) as my husband's "pie-of-the-month" (his choice, I realize these are not technically pies) before March ends and we start our gut cleanse.  After my return from visiting my folks in Massachusetts over spring break, we won't be eating any hamantaschen for a while.  However, I keep forgetting to leave ingredients out to soften (first I softened the butter, but forgot the cream cheese, so that's another couple of hours), plus I am wiped out for some reason.  I will make them later, after I get the oil changed in my car for the trip, and stop by our storage unit to pick up my kid's Easter basket.

Lunch:  Safeway-made tortilla chips with Safeway-made guacamole, grapes, strawberries, Snapeas.

About  3:30 I drag myself out for the oil change and storage errands.  Sitting in the Jiffy Lube waiting area, I can barely suppress my sneezes and snuffles.  Uh-oh.  This is bad.

When I get home, my husband is there, and I promise to make the hamantaschen, just after I rest a little.  A while later, I get up to make the dough.  30 seconds later, I return to bed and confess that I do not want to make hamantaschen right now.  My husband is relieved.  "Can I get you anything?" he says.  "Tea?"  "Can you put the butter and the cream cheese back in the refrigerator?"  I ask.  I know I won't be making the hamantaschen now until May.

For dinner, we order Domino's and watch The Amazing Race while I try in vain to get comfortable on the couch with my aching body and aching head and throat.  I doubt that I have any appetite but when the pizza arrives I eat six slices.  Five of "my" pizza (green pepper and onion) and one of my husband's (pepperoni and pineapple).  Mine was better.  My husband eats six slices too, which will turn out to have not been such a good idea.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  For some reason, I wake up starving in the middle of the night, and eat a mandarin orange and some more chips with guacamole.  The chips poke my sore throat but I don't care.
 
Mar 27
A lot to do today, because it is Easter and kid and I are supposed to leave on our trip tomorrow.  My husband wakes up feeling sick himself, with significant nausea, which I don't have.  He starts throwing up after his morning coffee and this continues periodically all day.  At one point his temperature hits 102.  This is worse than how I feel.

We don't go out to breakfast the way we usually do on Sundays.

However, I do manage to boil 2 dozen eggs before breakfast.  A mother's a mother, no matter how small.

Breakfast: leftover collards, leftover biscuit with butter, tiny leftover smidge of white bean soup.  With some salt added, it actually turns out to be better than the minestrone.

​Lunch: 1 avocado, 1 cara-cara orange (delicious), 1 banana, 1 "hard-boiled" egg that turned out to be slightly soft-boiled.  Surprising how sustaining this meal was as compared to all the meals of toast 'n'stuff I've been having lately.

Breakfast: It's Sunday, so we went to Nick's Diner in Wheaton and had our Sunday brunch.  For me, a ham-egg-and-cheddar sandwich on an English muffin, and a side of home fries, and decaf coffee.  The ham at Nick's is special: there's a real ham on a spit sitting right next to the grill, and they cut some off the bone every time it is ordered.

Shopping: We needed to pick up a few things after breakfast, so I took my husband to the HMart in Wheaton near Nick's.  He had never been there before.  The HMart on a Sunday morning was busier than I have ever seen it before, just wall-to-wall people.  But my husband was thrilled by the crazy diversity of the shoppers (and, of course, the diversity of food that reflects the shoppers).  Then, to accompany your shopping for octopus, kimchi, Salvadorean-style tortillas, and house slippers, there was a soundtrack of American country music and a general atmosphere of camaraderie.  He loved it.  I didn't expect him to love it.  Purchases: two quarts of Chobani yogurt, one vanilla and one strawberry (my husband is on heavy-duty antibiotics), toilet paper, Pepperidge Farms whole wheat bread, mugwort injulmi, kim-bab, cage-free brown eggs, Goya decaf coffee, $36.

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Green Beans with Mushrooms, tucked inside a whole wheat pita, with plain Greek yogurt on top.  A simple and not-all-that-filling meal, but I knew we were going to have banana cream pie for dessert.

When I was a kid, my mom often left me with a short list of chores to do while she was away at work,"empty the dishwasher" being the most frequent.  In the summertime, there was a close second in terms of my level of resentment.  This was anything having to do with green beans: picking them, washing them, "snapping" them.  The garden seemed to produce an infinite number of green beans.  My mom thought I should be perfectly happy to sit in front of the TV and snap beans, but I was not perfectly happy.  I hated snapping beans, and, to be honest, I still do.  While I tend these days to leave them whole, the little poky ends have to be pinched or sliced off, and there is always what feels like a mountain of them.

 A more positive note on the beans: Indian recipes are generous with the spices-- it always blows me away to be adding a tablespoon of this and 2 teaspoons of that (of 5 or 6 different spices, to boot), where a western recipe might add a dainty half-teaspoon.  And the taste reflects that generosity.  You know what else?  These spices are good for us!  Why the hell don't we use more?

Dessert: my husband requested a banana-Nilla wafer pie as his January pie-of-the month.  I used Whole Foods brand vanilla wafers instead of the Nabisco kind, and made my own vanilla pudding and cream as the linked recipe indicates.  I will say the vanilla pudding used by this recipe is probably the easiest, most foolproof pudding I have ever made-- I'm thickening-impaired-- and I will likely save the link to use again for other applications.  Also, as a crustless pie that only requires 1) making pudding, 2) whipping cream, and 3) layering, this is one of the easiest "pies" I have encountered.  All this is to say, if you like that sort of thing, there is no reason not to make this dessert.  It's not really my style, but I had to admit that I liked it too.  Husband and daughter both had seconds but I restrained myself.

Breakfast: reheated shrimp dumplings from the Whole Foods dipped in soy sauce, leftover spaghetti with tomatoes and hazelnuts.

Lunch: Beef fried rice from the restaurant, after work (2:45 pm).  My daughter took a lot of bites.

Shopping, with daughter: (Target) Pineapple juice, raisins, lactose-free milk, mouthwash, $11.  (Giant) Coconut cream (because we couldn't find it at Target), $2.

Dinner: Eaten very late, 9:15 pm.  But, fortunately, it is New Year's Eve and we are all staying up late.  I made this incredibly wonderful dijon beef stew from Deb Perelman.  3/4 c. of mustard, really?  But it was so creamy and rich and full of complex flavor, from the mustards, the brandy (I used brandy instead of cognac) and red wine, the browned beef, the sweated onion and shallots, the big chunks of sauteed mushroom... absolutely everyone should make it.  It made my husband very happy (a simple man, he was especially excited about its being served atop egg noodles); he went back for seconds.  All that we needed on the side was a little salad (romaine, fresh basil and mint, with some pieces of orange on top and a lime-honey dressing).  The stew takes a while to cook, but it is not difficult or expensive.

Breakfast: Leftover lentils and rice from the other night; leftover eggplant with shiitake mushrooms and white rice.  Lots of rice.  I am worried about the arsenic now.

Lunch: Homemade lemonade; mandarin orange; slice of Pepperidge Farm 12-grain toast with butter; pistachios.

Shopping (Co-op): pint of heavy cream, half gallon of organic whole milk.  $10.  Really?  The heavy cream cost $4.89?  Also (at local bakery): 1 loaf of onion dill bread.  $6.

Dinner: Prepared in a rush when I got home at 7:45 from a school club meeting I'd hoped to be able to skip.  Egg and cheddar cheese scramble with a lot of farm spinach in it.  Onion dill toast from the local bakery.  Mandarin oranges.  It'll do.

An original recipe mash-up, with inspirations from Marie Carter, Driscoll's, and Keri Russell.

My husband and I recently watched the movie Waitress, a charming Adrienne Shelly film featuring a lot of mouthwatering pies, plus Keri Russell looking adorable in a diner waitress uniform.  Every man's fantasy: hot waitress bakes you pie regularly.  Also, it's a shame what happened to Adrienne Shelly.  But I digress.

​As I mentioned previously, I am baking my husband a pie-of-the-month this year (though my waitressing uniform is not nearly as hot as Keri Russell's).  Watching pies unfold onscreen, smooth chocolate and fillings poured lusciously into crusts, often over perfect fruit, made me desperate to reproduce some of them (and John desperate to eat them).  In particular, the Lonely Chicago Pie attracted me.  I wasn't really satisfied, though, with the recipes that other people, similarly inspired, had invented and posted on the internet, so I went looking for something that combined a blend of mixed berries with really dark chocolate (not a pudding or a mousse).  Actually, to be honest, the recipe I just linked is much closer to what I was looking for than anything I was able to find that day, and if I'd found it then I might have tried it.

I ended up torn between a fairly dense chocolate-and-berry pie from Marie Carter, and this more pudding-y pie from Driscoll's that had the advantage of a whipped cream topping.  I love whipped cream and it seemed desirable for balancing the rich chocolate.  Ultimately I decided to combine the two, and this dessert was born.

Now, the chocolate layer of this dessert is really very solid, more like something I would call a torte than a pie.  However, there are a lot of berries, both inside and on top, and a thick layer of cream that fairly shouts "French Silk Pie," and of course it is pie-shaped, because it is baked in a pie pan.  My daughter announced that it was neither cake nor pie, but shared aspects of both; she, continually alert for connections to gender and sexuality politics, delightedly declared it a "non-binary dessert."

The apple pie I posted before: totally heteronormative.

Feeling "non-binary dessert" was a bit clunky, I suggested "non-pienary," and she, being fourteen, thought that was brilliant.  This recipe is so named henceforth.

**
Non-pienary

1 1/2 c. chocolate graham crackers
1/2 c. + 1/3 c. butter
1 c. dark (preferably bittersweet) chocolate chips
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar, plus a spoon or two more
2 T. powdered sugar
2. eggs
1/2 c. flour
1 1/2-2 t. vanilla
about 2 small packages raspberries
about 1 small package blueberries
2 c. heavy cream
 
Crust: Crush 1 1/2 c. chocolate graham crackers or cookies (I used teddy grahams) and mix with 1/3 c. melted butter.  Bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes.

Filling: Melt together the other stick of butter and 1 c.  good-quality dark chocolate chips.  Remove from heat, cool slightly,  and gradually stir in 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. white sugar, and 2 beaten eggs, a little at a time.  Add 1/2 c. flour, 1 t. vanilla, and about 3/4 c. of raspberries and 1/2 c. blueberries, give or take.  Mash the berries a little before using.  Pour it all in the crust and bake 45 minutes.  Chill until entirely cooled, if possible, before topping.

Topping: Puree one small package of raspberries in the blender, then strain through a sieve to remove seedy parts.  Add a spoonful or two of sugar.  Whip 2 c., of heavy cream with 2 T. of powdered sugar and a little bit of vanilla (1/2-1 t.).  Mound the pie with the cream.  Spoon little dollops of raspberry puree onto the cream and use toothpick to swirl.  Top pie with plenty of extra berries.  Serve with dashes of extra raspberry puree on the plate.

Finally, I have a day off to get back to writing and work on the site.  There is still a certain chance that I will be called in to work, as my manager is sick with the flu and may end up having to go home.  But, as things stand now, this is the first day to myself that I've had in about 3 weeks.

Breakfast: Last leftover pear/hazelnut/chocolate chip muffin from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen recipe, piece of toast with pizza sauce and provolone cheese.  Except for a single pear last night, I have hardly had any fruits or vegetables in the past couple of days.  This is probably not good for me.  I already feel a bit digestively upset.  As always, when I stop restricting food choices according to some "diet" (Clean diet, Perfect Health Diet, etc.), I return to eating excessive carbs and particularly wheat flour.  I don't think this is about my personal choices so much as the ubiquity of these foods in our national cuisine (though I shudder to use the word "cuisine" about the American diet).  If you are not actively avoiding wheat flour and sugar, you are almost certainly overindulging instead.

Lunch: White cheddar cranberry cheese (it wasn't as good as it sounded), Whole Foods house-made flour tortilla chips (also not so great) with Whole Foods house-made artichoke-spinach dip (why are so many Whole Foods products not as amazing as they sound or look?), spoonful of leftover pistachio paste (yum).

Shopping at the coop:  Talenti vanilla ice cream, organic lactose-free milk, cage-free eggs, organic black mission figs, organic ground cinnamon, organic pepper, $22.
 
Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's corn with sesame seeds and tomatoes, Palak Paneer, basmati rice and chapathi from our local Indian restaurant, salad of lettuce and CSA arugula and dried figs.  Apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

The corn recipe was really very delicious.  It has a lot of ingredients (most of which are seasonings), but it is not difficult.  I wasn't sure the sesame seeds added much, besides nutritional value.  

For my husband's and my wedding anniversary this year (our fourth), I gave him a gift: a fruit pie every month, of his choice, made by me and made only for him.  He only has to share as much as he wants to; it is fully his.  (He always shares a bit.)  The apple pie was actually a belated pie for October, which got overwhelmingly busy near the end.  That means he'll have to come up with a second pie request, for November.  I am willing to interpret "fruit" very loosely.  Pecans can be a fruit.  Pumpkins are a fruit.
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Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with heavy cream or half and half, 2 regular, 2 decaf. 1/2 a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (the other half sat on the table undrank.  Undrunk.  Undrunken.)